Mate Kapović (born August 5, 1981 in

Zagreb Zagreb ( ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, north of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the ...

) is a Croatian

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

specializing in

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

and the

Proto-Balto-Slavic language Proto-Balto-Slavic (PBS or PBSl) is a reconstructed hypothetical proto-language descending from Proto-Indo-European (PIE). From Proto-Balto-Slavic, the later Balto-Slavic languages are thought to have developed, composed of the Baltic and Sla ...

Biography

He studied Croatian language and linguistics at the Faculty of Arts of

University of Zagreb The University of Zagreb (, ) is a public university, public research university in Zagreb, Croatia. It is the largest Croatian university and one of the oldest continuously operating universities in Europe. The University of Zagreb and the Unive ...

. He graduated in 2003 and he has been teaching at the same university since 2004. In 2007, he obtained his doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy of University of Zadar (''Reconstruction of Balto-Slavic Personal Pronouns with Emphasis on Accentuation''). In 2010, he was appointed

docent The term "docent" is derived from the Latin word , which is the third-person plural present active indicative of ('to teach, to lecture'). Becoming a docent is often referred to as habilitation or doctor of science and is an academic qualifi ...

at the University of Zagreb, and in 2014, he was appointed

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

. At the Faculty of Arts, he lectures on general

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

, historical-comparative linguistics, phonology and Indo-European

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

. His academic interests include accentology,

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...

dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...

and

language policy Language policy is both an interdisciplinary academic field and implementation of ideas about language use. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as ...

. He is a member of the Committee of Dialectology at the Department of Philological Sciences of the

Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (; , HAZU) is the national academy of Croatia. HAZU was founded under the patronage of the Croatian bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer under the name Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (, JAZU) since its ...

. He has authored the following books: ''Uvod u indoeuropsku lingvistiku: Pregled jezikâ i poredbena fonologija'' (2008), ''Čiji je jezik?'' (2011), ''Povijest hrvatske akcentuacije: Fonetika'' (2015). In 2019, he coauthored ''Jeziku je svejedno'' (2019), a book devoted to the phenomenon of prescriptivism in Croatian linguistics. He has published numerous articles in Croatian and international journals. He is engaged in criticism of

linguistic purism Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is a concept with two common meanings: one with respect to foreign languages and the other with respect to the internal variants of a language (dialects). The first meaning is the historical trend ...

and prescriptivism. He was the initiator of the annual conference International Workshop on Balto-Slavic Accentology (IWoBA). Kapović proposed revisions and changes to the '' Declaration on the Common Language'' prior to its publication, but stated that "they were mostly not respected" and as a result did not sign the document. He criticized the document for posturing as 'neutral', 'apolitical' and 'non-ideological'. He participated on a

panel discussion A panel discussion, or simply a panel, involves a group of people gathered to discuss a topic in front of an audience, typically at scientific, business, or academic conferences, fan conventions, and on television shows. Panels usually include a ...

on the Declaration in Zagreb. Politically, Kapović is a

leftist Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politi ...

activist who co-founded the Workers' Front. In the 2017 Zagreb local elections, Kapović was elected as the party's first rotating representative in the

Zagreb Assembly The City Assembly of the City of Zagreb (, short: GSGZ) is the lawmaking body of the Croatian capital of Zagreb. It consists of 47 members who were elected by universal suffrage and secret ballot at 2021 elections for a term of four years. Th ...

, being followed by Katarina Peović. He was the party's nominee for the 2021 Zagreb local elections, but was ultimately not re-elected.

Selected works

* ''Uvod u indoeuropsku lingvistiku: Pregled jezikâ i poredbena fonologija'' (2008) * ''O „pravilnosti” u jeziku'' (2009) * ''Čiji je jezik?'' (2011) * ''Language, ideology, and politics in Croatia'' (2011) * ''Ogledi o kapitalizmu i demokraciji'' (2015) * ''Povijest hrvatske akcentuacije: Fonetika'' (2016) * ''O preskripciji i preskriptivizmu u Hrvatskoj'' (coauthor, 2016) * ''The Indo-European Languages'' (ed., 2nd edition) * ''Jeziku je svejedno'' (coauthor, 2019)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kapović, Mate Linguists from Croatia Academic staff of the University of Zagreb 1981 births University of Zagreb alumni Living people